The Winter Park of 2029 will look different from today’s city in at least one big way: Most of the city won’t have power poles or overhead electrical lines.

For the next 17 years or so, crews will be digging up streets and burying cables in a $70 million effort to beautify the city and make it less vulnerable to the power failures that occur when storms blow down lines.

City officials say the change has been welcomed by residents of Winter Park, where tree-lined streets, a point of civic pride, can be marred by power lines.

“The city did a survey, and the vast majority of citizens wanted utilities underground,” said Jerry Warren, director of the Winter Park Electric Utility Department.

So far, about 79 miles of electrical cables have been buried. That number includes subdivisions and condominiums built with underground lines from the start.

That leaves another another 79 miles to go, said Warren, whose office is coordinating contractors who are burying cable. The project is funded by profits from the utility, formed in 2005 when residents voted to break away from Progress Energy. The utility manages electrical service but buys power from other utilities.

Most of the “undergrounding” has occurred along main thoroughfares. Residents have two choices: They can wait for the city to get around to burying the wires on their streets, which could take a decade or more; or they can be part of what the city has called its “plug-in program,” which allows residents to share the cost of burying the wires on their street with the city. The plug-in option is less popular, Warren said.

Other municipal utilities have underground wiring, but Winter Park’s effort to bury cables that are still overhead is unusual. In Orlando, 1,181 miles, or about 61 percent of the city’s power lines, are underground, said Orlando Utilities Commission spokesman Tim Trudell, and there are no plans to bury overhead wires.

About 60 percent of the lines in Kissimmee, which also owns its utility, are underground, but that city isn’t burying its overhead lines either, said Kissimmee Utility Authority spokesman Chris Gent.

Winter Park’s project could be finished sooner if the city were to take out a loan.

“If we did, we think we could underground the balance in eight years,” Warren said. Going into debt for the project isn’t likely, though. Residents haven’t been enthusiastic about the idea — and it’s not what Mayor Ken Bradley wants.

“I don’t believe in borrowing money for that purpose,” Bradley said. “I believe that we should use the proceeds of the utility to continue this undergrounding.”

Even cable-TV wires, which also use power poles, could go away.

Bright House Networks, which offers cable service in the city, will have the right to buy poles affecting its lines, city officials said. However, Bright House spokesman Donald Forbes said the company is working with the city to run its lines underground.

Whether the project is complete in less than a decade or takes the full 17 years, it’s important for Winter Park, Bradley said.

“If money was no object, we would do it in eight years,” he said. “But we will be very judicious to complete the next wave of undergrounding to accomplish both reliability and aesthetics.”

Selective burying of electric wires to protect critical public services, dramatically enhanced tree-trimming and new utility performance standards with penalties topped a list of recommendations issued Monday by the panel studying Connecticut’s readiness for future major storms.

Now consumers must let state officials know how much more they will pay for this system, said Joseph McGee, the chairman of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s Two Storm Panel.

The panel’s final report also warned that public- and private-sector emergency plans need to anticipate responses for more severe weather and called for improved communication among utilities, state and local governments, labor unions and private social service agencies.

Though the panel stopped short of recommending any specific increase in residential and business electric bills, McGee said that a portion of any added burden would fall on consumers.

“That’s the great public debate,” McGee said. “It needs to be transparent, and that’s where we need to begin this conversation.

Malloy said his office would issue a response to the report later this week, and that it could include state policy changes to be made immediately through an executive order, as well as recommendations for the General Assembly to consider during the regular 2012 session, which begins in February.

Malloy charged the panel with assessing both public- and private-sector readiness for weather-related disasters after Tropical Storm Irene and an Oct. 29 nor’easter. The former storm left more than 670,000 customers without electrical service while the latter eliminated power for more than 800,000 residences and businesses.

“We did many things right in the wake of these two storms, but when the margin of error is zero — like it was for these two storms — we have to do better,” Malloy said.

Connecticut Light & Power Co., the state’s largest electric utility serving about 1.2 million customers in 149 cities and towns, issued a brief written response.

“We share the objective of the Two-Storm Panel and the Governor to ensure Connecticut is better prepared for the next emergency, recognizing that weather-related events offer unique and extreme challenges for our communities,” the statement read. “The report of the panel is extensive and we have begun our review of the findings and recommendations that pertain to CL&P. In the meantime, we have already taken a number of steps to strengthen our own preparedness and to engage with state and municipal leaders to improve our collective response to adverse events.”

ASSUME THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO

CL&P absorbed the majority of criticism, both from public officials and from consumers, after power restoration efforts took between nine and 12 days after each of the two storms. Criticism was particularly high following the October nor’easter, which dumped between 1 and 2 feet of snow on much of northern and central Connecticut and dropped temperatures below freezing.

Shortly after that event, CL&P President Jeffrey Butler resigned and the company announced new administrative assignments to improve readiness for future storms. The company had failed to make power restoration deadlines following the October storm and Butler had conceded that CL&P had struggled to secure the private contractors it needed in a timely fashion.

McGee’s panel echoed the conclusions reported last month by Witt Associates, a Washington, D.C.-based public safety and crisis management firm led by former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Witt.

CL&P has an emergency response plan that cites a worst case scenario of more than 100,000 outages. “This is far less than the number of outages experienced during the two storms,” McGee’s panel wrote, “and clearly less than the outages that should be anticipated should a Category 3 Hurricane strike Connecticut.

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, which is used to classify hurricanes forming in the Atlantic Ocean or northern Pacific Ocean, ranks categories 1 through 5 in terms of increasing severity. A Category 3 Hurricane features winds ranging from 111 to 130 mph with “high risk of injury or death” and “devastating damage” to buildings, other structures and trees.

Besides pressing all utilities to devise plans to reflect “a true worst-case scenario,” the state also should develop performance standards — including penalties — for utilities to meet in future crises, the panel recommended.

A major portion of the panel’s report also questions whether state and local government readiness plans are too mild, failing to anticipate the worst possible weather Connecticut is likely to face in the coming decades.

The state Department of Emergency Management considers a strong Category 3 Hurricane, such as the one that struck Connecticut in 1938, as the “most probable,” worst-case disaster scenario facing the state, the panel reported. And meteorologists for the National Weather Service testified that Connecticut is overdue for a major hurricane.

A Category 3 storm would far exceed either Irene or the October nor’easter, with the potential to black out the entire state, the panel reported. While total damage for both storms was set at between $750 million and $1 billion, damage from the 1938 hurricane, adjusted for inflation, tops $54 billion, the report states.

The panel also reported that meteorological testimony showed sea levels are expected to rise by 1.5 feet by midcentury, and the storm surge during Irene already came “perilously close to flooding water and sewage treatment facilities.”

Besides upgrading emergency response plans, state transportation and environmental protection officials should develop new engineering standards to ensure that new road, bridge, sewage treatment plant and other infrastructure construction reflects the more severe weather and other environmental risks Connecticut faces, the panel recommended.

ENHANCING TREE-TRIMMING AND BURYING LINES

Another key step in better preparedness, the panel recommended, involves recognizing that past vegetation management efforts were insufficient. Fallen trees and tree limbs were responsible for the bulk of the outages in both storms, including 90 percent of those during Irene.

CL&P proposed last month that it increase its tree-trimming budget by 10 percent compared with its annual average over the prior decade.

McGee’s panel did not recommend a specific increase, but first called for a statewide tree risk assessment study. This would be followed by a five-year collaborative effort among utilities, towns and the state to implement an enhanced tree-trimming program.

The panel also recommended that Connecticut establish a statewide Hazardous Tree Removal Fund that would provide matching grants to residents who will help pay to remove trees on private property that pose a risk to electric wires.

Utility maintenance of poles and other related structures also was insufficient and needs to be upgraded, the report concludes.

CL&P estimated in mid-December it could reduce outages by up to 40 percent a decade from now with a 10-year improvement plan that would gradually add more than $13 to the average residential monthly bill.

It offered a plan to invest an extra $2.2 billion in tree-trimming, line and pole replacement and other improvements designed to “harden” its grid against the elements. But it stopped short of recommending extensive burying of existing overhead lines.

The Two Storm Panel said burying lines needs to be studied immediately. If there is public support for added costs, McGee said, the limited, strategic burying of key lines could be done to ensure that critical services — police and fire protection, shelters, groceries stores and gasoline stations — are protected in each community.

“We also recognize we are not going to underground the whole system,” he said.

Malloy, who is former mayor of Stamford, said burying of lines helped protect vital services in key portions of his city.

The two storms resulted in “minimal loss of life, medical emergencies and loss of property,” the report added. Most of the 13 fatalities and medical problems were related to carbon monoxide poisoning or other issues related to the misuse of backup power sources.

Nonetheless, the panel said communications needs to be improved significantly among all parties involved in emergency response.

Other recommendations of the panel include:

Forming a municipal/utility working group to ensure that utilities understand each community’s top priorities for power restoration during a crisis.

And holding regular emergency preparedness meetings in each city and town, and periodic regional training exercises involving utilities, public agencies and private social service agencies.

MANKATO — If a new proposal to pay for the burying of power lines on Madison Avenue comes to pass, every Xcel Energy customer in Mankato will help foot the bill.

The burying of these lines has long been a desire of the city, though businesses along the road haven’t wanted to pay the estimated $656,000 in assessments to do the work.

For the first time, the City Council heard about another financing option Monday, one that would put the tab on everyone’s power bills.

Under the proposal, most of the cost would be borne by the city’s 13,517 residential electricity customers, who would pay $1.14 per month for 36 months. Businesses would pay more, topping out at $3.42 per month, also for three years.

The City Council agreed Monday to move in that direction, though it can still reverse itself. An Xcel official will be sought to explain the process to the city, perhaps at a work session later this month.

A big question remains: Is the breakdown of who pays how much flexible, or can the city change it?

Two councilors suggested large businesses wouldn’t be paying enough of the bill.

Councilman Charlie Hurd said he was troubled by two things. First, by the fact that the city as whole would pay for a benefit felt most keenly by Madison Avenue businesses. The rate structure, with a major company paying only three times more than a home owner, was another concern.

Mayor Eric Anderson agreed with Hurd.

“This is a precedent being set by the city of Mankato, is it not?” he asked City Manager Pat Hentges, who said it would indeed be the first time this financing method was being used.

Supporters of burying the line said now, while the city is doing a major road project on Madison Avenue, is the opportunity to do a long-sought improvement.

“If we don’t do it now, it’s never going to get done,” Councilwoman Tamra Rovney said.

City Manager Pat Hentges said the main benefit of the project would be a safety improvement, and supporters agreed, though they were vague about the specific safety risks entailed by keeping the lines above ground.

When Councilwoman Karen Foreman motioned to support the burial of the power lines, she included it with the entire Madison Avenue project. That bundling of a controversial measure with a popular one helped the power line burial move forward. That’s because the Madison Avenue project required six of seven votes to pass, and no one on the council wanted to vote against the whole project.

Councilors could have separated the burial of the lines and the Madison Avenue project, though they did not.

In any case, opponents will still get their shot at the power line measure by itself, probably in February.

The cost of burying the power lines is roughly equal to a 5 percent increase in the city’s levy, though it would be spread out over three years.

Ken Dixon, Staff Writer

Published 08:46 a.m., Thursday, December 8, 2011

HARTFORD — The state should consider innovative ways to provide electricity and develop public-private partnerships to allow multiple utilities to pay for new underground lines, according to the state’s environmental commissioner.

Daniel C. Esty, commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, told the governor’s Two Storm Panel on Wednesday that as lines are dug in upcoming years to utilize new natural-gas discoveries in New York and Pennsylvania, they could become multi-use.

In fact, it could be a “quintuple play” if electric and broadband lines were put underground and old combined storm and sanitary sewer lines were separated alongside the new gas lines.

Esty said “distributed generation” authorized by the General Assembly in 2005 and 2007, could allow for non-centralized energy generators — such as fuel cells and gas turbines in town centers, hospitals, prisons, sewage plants, gas stations and grocery stores — to operate when power fails on a massive scale like it did during the October snowstorm and Tropical Storm Irene.

“I think everyone feels like there is a value in at least fleshing out the concept here,” Esty told the panel. “The possibility of actually building out a micro-grid structure is much easier for us than most anywhere else. It might well be the foundation for a 21st century electricity system that is much more robust than what we had going back.”

Such a system could cost $500 million to $1 billion statewide, Esty said, noting that local communities could undertake their own efforts, under the technical guidance of the DEEP.

He told the panel it would have to be understood as an investment in “infrastructure resilience” and would be insurance against the high costs of recovering from major storms and mass power outages.

Esty believes that the state should develop performance requirements for the recovery of electric utilities after major outages. While Massachusetts law, with the potential for multi-million-dollar penalties has been highlighted to the panel, Esty said that to date no fines have resulted there.

“I still think having performance standards makes sense and I think having a series of economic consequences flow from sub-par performance is appropriate,” Esty said. “We are the ones in the public-utility context that have to provide that discipline.”

Esty said that while CL&P had prepared for a 10 percent system-wide outage, UI planned for a 70 percent outage rate. The Two Storm Panel is working on recommendations to give Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on how to prevent wide-scale outages and restore electricity faster when it fails.